Bard College Appoints Acting President

Bard College has named executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs Jonathan Becker as acting president. In an announcement Friday, Bard said Becker will chair a newly formed leadership council, composed of senior leaders from the college, to “ensure their expertise and diverse perspectives inform Bard’s path forward.”

Becker will also support the Board of Trustees as it conducts “a deliberate and inclusive search” for permanent leadership, beginning with the appointment of an interim president while it recruits its next permanent president, the announcement said.

Becker will assume the role on July 1, marking the end of Leon Botstein’s 51-year presidency of the rural New York institution.  

The appointment follows months of disruption at the college after the U.S. Justice Department’s files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein revealed more information about Botstein’s relationship with Epstein.  

In April, an external law firm released the findings of a two-month investigation into Botstein’s connections with the late financier. The report found that Botstein “minimized and was not fully accurate in describing his relationship with Epstein” to the Bard community. In May, Botstein announced he would resign on June 30. 

Becker has held a number of positions during his 30-year career at Bard. He is director of the Center for Civic Engagement, is vice chancellor of Bard’s Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century and led Bard’s Sanctuary program which, according to the institution, has hosted more than 180 students who are displaced or threatened by conflict, crisis or political repression in their home countries. 

“After carefully considering options to transition our college into its future permanent leader, the board unanimously agrees that Jonathan is the right person for this moment,” Brandon Weber, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in the press release. “With an exceptional career at Bard leading many of the college’s academic and international student programming, we are confident that he will ensure a seamless process as we move into the next phase of our search for long-term leadership.”

When he retires, Botstein’s term as an ex officio member of the Board of Trustees will also end, a Bard spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed. He will stay on at the college as a music professor and president emeritus.